CCOASTALOASTAL HERITAGEERITAGE HVOLUME 14, NUMBER 4 SPRING 2000

Living Soul OF

SPRING 2000 • 1 CONTENTS

3 Coastal Heritage is a quarterly publication of the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, a university- LIVING SOUL OF GULLAH based network supporting research, education, Spawned by Africa and Europe, by slavery and isolation, and outreach to conserve coastal resources and the Gullah culture is fading into the modern world. enhance economic opportunity for the people of . Comments regarding this or future issues of Coastal Heritage are welcomed. Subscriptions are free upon request 13 by contacting: SOUTHERN BLEND S.C. Sea Grant Consortium 287 Meeting Street Charleston, S.C. 29401 phone: (843) 727-2078 e-mail: [email protected] Executive Director ON THE COVER M. Richard DeVoe Rev. LuElla Smith offers testimony about her Christian faith at Echo House, a Director of Communications community center in North Charleston.Today, Gullah traditions can be found Linda Blackwell in African-American religious practices, such as testimonies, syncopated Editor clapping, and call-and-response. John H. Tibbetts PHOTO/WADE SPEES Art Director Patty Snow

Contributing Writer Peg Alford � Board of Directors The Consortium’s Board of Directors is composed of the chief executive officers of its member institutions:

Dr. Leroy Davis, Sr., Chair President, S.C. State University James F. Barker President, Clemson University Dr. Raymond Greenberg President, Medical University of South Carolina Major General John S. Grinalds President, The Citadel Dr. Ronald R. Ingle President, Coastal Carolina University Dr. John M. Palms A ROAD LESS TRAVELED. Two boys stand on a country road in President, University of South Carolina Lowcountry South Carolina in the 1910s. Only a few generations ago, the Gullah culture thrived along isolated stretches of the coast. PHOTO/COLLECTIONS OF Judge Alex Sanders THE SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. President, University of Charleston, S.C. Dr. Paul A. Sandifer Executive Director S.C. Department of Natural Resources

2 • COASTAL HERITAGE LIVING SOUL OF GULLAH

By John H. Tibbetts

Spawned by Africa and Europe, by slavery and isolation, the Gullah culture is fading into the modern world. CASTING THE WATERS. As Sam Moultrie, Sr., guides a flat-bottomed boat he built by hand, Sam R. Brown, Jr., casts a net into a St. Helena Island creek. For generations, Gullah people have supplemented their diet and income by shrimping, crabbing, and fishing. PHOTO/WADE SPEES.

t’s the oldest American story, told countless times. The Gullah people are descendants of various African For generations, an ethnic or religious clan, tightly ethnic groups who were forced together on South Carolina I knit by language and religion, huddles in a New plantations. When Ashantis, Fantes, Fulas, Ibos, World rural enclave or urban ghetto, enduring prejudice Mandingos, Yorubas, the Bakongo cultures, and other and poverty. Then abruptly ancient bonds fray. Strangers peoples arrived as slaves in America, they established a move in and disrupt local traditions, elders complain creole language—Gullah—from English and African about their heritage’s neglect and exploitation by sources. outsiders, while young people leave home in droves to The vocabulary of every creole language is Euro- gain better jobs and education. pean—English, French, Spanish, Dutch, or Portuguese. It’s the immigrant story of assimilation and loss, told The slaveholders “had to communicate with the slaves, so by Irish Catholics in Boston, Russian Jews in New York, they made sure the slaves used European words,” notes and Chinese Buddhists in San Francisco. But over the Philip D. Morgan, historian at the College of William & last 50 years, groups with centuries-old roots in America Mary. In the English colonies of North America, slaves also have been dragged into the mainstream, including used the English-based to communicate the Cajuns in Louisiana, highlanders in Appalachia, with one another. Native Americans in every state, and the Gullah people Yet down through centuries, the Gullah people of coastal South Carolina. managed to retain extensive African sources in their

SPRING 2000 • 3 speech and folklore. The grammar of Today, many think of South Highways and condos and golf Gullah is African, and many aspects Carolina’s Gullah people as the black courses and hotels replaced “praise of Gullah culture—religious beliefs, residents of James, Johns, houses” and graveyards and farms. arts and crafts, stories, songs, and Wadmalaw, Edisto, St. Helena, and Many sea-island people sold their proverbs—were derived from African Hilton Head islands. But the classic property and moved away. In some sources. The Gullah people have Gullah culture actually existed on cases they were forced to sell their preserved more of their African the mainland tidal area, along rivers land, unable to afford the rising taxes cultural history than any other large for 30 miles inland, known as the spawned by resort and suburban group of blacks in the United States, “rice coast,” says Charles Joyner, development. noted William S. Pollitzer, professor historian at Coastal Carolina Like all oral societies, Gullah is emeritus of anatomy and anthropol­ University. The rice coast and the fragile. Without a written language, ogy at the University Gullah culture the passing of knowledge within a of North Carolina at extended south from culture can quickly break down. In Chapel Hill, in a 1999 Winyah Bay near many of today’s endangered oral book. “So many Georgetown cultures, children are not interested Africanisms survived through in learning the old ways, which in Gullah culture,” into northern disappear as elders, the repositories says Pollitzer. To some Florida. Even today, of knowledge, die out. An oral degree, “it was a re­ says Joyner, the culture is transmitted primarily creation of Africa Gullah culture may through families, and when there is a within the New remain as strong on break—even of just 30 years or so— World.” the mainland as on the loss often cannot be regained. The Gullah the sea islands. “For years, we were told that our language is unique, After the Civil language is broken,” says Marquetta the only lasting War, when slaves L. Goodwine, founder of the Gullah/ English-based creole were emancipated, Geechee Sea Island Coalition based in North America. many Gullah people on St. Helena Island. “A generation “Nothing like it A Lowcountry field hand in the 1910s. began to assimilate of people were told, ‘You’ll never get survives in other PHOTO/COLLECTIONS OF THE SOUTH CAROLINA into southern black through life talking like that.’” City HISTORICAL SOCIETY. places” in the United society. During the blacks often sought to distinguish States, says Morgan. “Similar creole next century, large numbers of themselves from the Gullah speakers languages may have been spoken Gullah people left rural areas for they regarded as inferior. Goodwine outside of coastal South Carolina (in Savannah and Charleston, or they remembers, “Anybody living in town the slavery era), but they disappeared became part of the great migration of would say, ‘I’m not Gullah; I’m not quickly. By the early 19th century, blacks north to cities on the eastern from the island.’” there was little evidence that other seaboard, especially Philadelphia and creole languages existed in the New York City. A WORLD APART Chesapeake region and North Yet by the end of the Second Carolina,” where slaves adapted to World War, many Gullah people still Two lucrative crops—rice and Standard English. stayed home in rural areas along the sea-island cotton—were the driving Gullah culture thrived in places coast. “They maintained a separate­ forces behind the creation of Gullah with a significant black majority. ness,” says Lawrence Rowland, culture. On most of the large plantations in historian at the University of South Within the first decade after coastal South Carolina, slaves Carolina-Beaufort. “Gullah people Charles Town’s founding in 1670, greatly outnumbered whites. In All were marginalized economically and settlers had already brought slaves Saints Parish, between the socially.” with them from the West Indies. In Waccamaw River and the Atlantic Modern influences diluted the the first few years of the Carolina Ocean, there were nine African- language, and many African words settlement, between one-fourth and Americans to every one white were lost, replaced by Standard one-third of the colony’s population person in 1860, for example. Even English. Starting in the 1950s, resort were Africans, according to Peter the smallest rice plantation in the development, racial integration, the H. Wood, University of North parish had nearly 100 slaves, and civil rights movement, and economic Carolina at Chapel Hill historian, the largest plantation had more opportunities transformed the coast in a 1974 book. At first, slaves than 1,100. and hastened Gullah’s decline. worked alongside their owners,

4 • COASTAL HERITAGE NET PROFIT. Luke Smalls, a retiree on St. Helena Island, sews a net to catch shrimp, fish, and crabs. When he was a boy, his uncle taught him how. “In those days, the only way you could get a net was to sew one. If I do it steadily, I can make a net in three or four weeks. But many young people aren’t interested in learning.They can make money at things that take less time.” PHOTO/WADE SPEES

SPRING 2000 • 5 struggling to survive on the heavily black majority increasingly lived within timbered, swampy land. their creole world. Early on, the English settlers searched Over nearly 150 years—from 1670 to for a staple crop they could export, 1808—at least 120,000 Africans were planting cotton, indigo, ginger, grapes, and hauled legally into Charleston, the primary olives—without much success. Settlers slave-trading port for the southern Atlantic exported wood products to other colonies, seaboard. But many traders looked for but their immediate economic salvation opportunities to move slaves illegally or off Assimilating was in raising livestock for sale overseas. the books, especially during times of rising By 1678, Carolina was already exporting import duties. A large number of slaves, The Gullah people have not beef, pork, and lumber to Barbados and particularly in the colony’s earlier years, been alone in facing the the rest of the West Indies, notes Wood. remained in South Carolina to work on confusion and difficulty of And this trade to the Caribbean was so coastal plantations. assimilating to mainstream American life. For hundreds of crucial that during the first 30 years of the The Caribbean connection remained years, immigrants to the colony some English documents referred to important during the history of the Caro­ United States “from all over “Carolina in ye West Indies.” lina slave trade. Before arriving in North Europe have had to withdraw from their own cultures to In the mid-1680s, a new rice seed was America, a slave was considered more become Americans,” says introduced from Madagascar to Charles valuable if he had been channeled through Rosalind Saunders, historical Town, and soon this grain, called “Caro­ the West Indies for “seasoning”—that is, if consultant for Brookgreen Gardens. lina Gold,” was planted on inland swamps. he had been acclimated to diseases and Over the past 30 years, By 1700, Carolina Gold was a lucrative slavery conditions in the New World. many rural Southerners have staple crop, which planters exported Throughout the colonial era, Carolina also struggled to adapt to a bewildering, new world. In one primarily to Europe. And that same year, slaveholders showed a preference for generation, for example, Hilton planters sent ships to Africa looking for people from the rice-growing areas of Head has been transformed slaves to import to Charleston. Africa—the Windward Coast, including from a rural, forested island to a resort community visited by “Through the early 1700s, Africans, Senegambia and Sierra Leone. Africans millions of tourists each year, native peoples, and Europeans—slaves, were cultivating rice for centuries before just one small part of a indentured servants, landowners—all lived Europeans entered the slave trade, and massive social and economic in the same houses, under the same roofs,” certain ethnic groups were imported transformation—the modern Americanization—of the Deep says Rosalind Saunders, historical consult­ deliberately because they knew how to South. ant at Brookgreen Gardens. By 1720, grow rice, says Joyner. Africans may have While the coastal economy though, Southern planters established brought over techniques to irrigate rice has thrived and newcomers have poured to the shoreline profitable commercial farms in the isolated fields in early Carolina. in record numbers, historic malarial swamps near coastal rivers, and Transatlantic trade carried not only folkways of all kinds have slaves outnumbered whites in the slaves into the New World, but also diseases been disappearing. “The old Southern traditions—black Lowcountry. A large rice plantation might that were endemic in Africa. Mosquitoes and white—are under rely on several hundred slaves to build, that transmitted malaria and yellow fever assault,” says historian operate, and repair massive flood-control were inadvertently transported on slave ships Lawrence Rowland of the University of South Carolina- structures, and to plant, harvest, and and, ironically, may have helped to sustain Beaufort. transport the grain. With a captive labor African traditions along the southern force, planters produced millions of pounds Atlantic coastline. After a long history of of rice each year for international mar- exposure to malaria, Africans had developed kets—and they could afford to build manor a degree of resistance to this disease, which houses and separate shacks for slaves. devastated whites. To escape the disease- In the colony’s first years, constant ridden swamps, planters retreated to Charles­ contact between blacks and whites forced ton mansions in fever season. “The slaves many slaves to learn English and to were often left to themselves when the assimilate quickly to Euro-American whites left” during warm months, allowing culture. But later, as the numbers of slaves slaves greater flexibility over their lives, says on Carolina plantations grew, it appeared Pollitzer, with the result that many African that a smaller percentage of Africans spoke traditions and practices survived. English well enough to be understood by By the second half of the 18th century, whites, noted Wood. And as planters a new system of labor improved the lives of became richer and left for the cities, the large numbers of slaves along the coast.

6 • COASTAL HERITAGE S PLE STA THER and O TON, RICE, COT

S LA VE T RA DE

SENEGAL GAMBIA BISSAU GUINEA IVORY NIGERIA SIERRA LEONE COAST GHANA LIBERIA BENIN CAMEROON TOGO

RIO MUNI GABON

CONGO CABINDA

CURRENT MAP OF WEST AFRICAN NATIONS

In 1787, after the American Revolution, South Carolina banned slave importations, but from 1804 to 1808 the slave trade was reopened to accommodate cotton planters. In just NAMBIA four years, South Carolina was flooded with 40,000 Africans. Most of these slaves—60 percent—were from Angola, often called “N’Gulla.” Many historians believe that the term “Gullah people”originally referred to Angolans.

SPRING 2000 • 7 Many rice plantations had become highly sophisticated operations, where tasks were specialized and clearly demarcated. Most field hands performed a specific task, such as hoeing a given amount of land a day. When their jobs were done, usually by early afternoon, they often spent the rest of the day working their own plots of land, which could be a quarter of an acre, where Cultural Survival they grew rice, corn, potatoes, and tobacco, and kept their own chickens, Until 30 years ago, many historians agreed that slavery cattle, and hogs. and segregation had been so This “task system” allowed slaves devastating to African- some degree of economic independence Americans that their cultural traditions had been completely from whites. Lowcountry slaves by 1800 crushed. The prevailing view established extensive trading networks for was that blacks lacked their their crops and crafts. The plantations own authentic music, crafts, and literature, so they were located on the interstate highway absorbed those of Euro- systems of the era—the coastal rivers— Americans. For decades, “the and many slaves interacted with river consensus was that there wasn’t much black culture,” traders. “The rice plantations were not says historian Charles Joyner isolated in the 19th century,” says Joyner. of Coastal Carolina University. “They had landings on rivers that tied Black intellectuals scoffed at this. “The white American them to the great American ports, and has charged the Negro rivers were efficient ways to get around.” American with being without Visiting their estates, planters were past or tradition,” wrote the novelist and essayist Ralph sometimes surprised or angered by their Ellison in 1958. But white slaves’ entrepreneurship, wrote Ira Berlin, Americans, he noted, also University of Maryland historian, in a denigrated and misunderstood 1998 book. In 1806, Combahee River their own traditions, and genuflected to European planters complained about “pedling boats culture, which they considered which frequent the river....for the purpose the seedbed of all enlighten­ of trading with The Negroe Slaves, to the REVIVAL. Young and old enjoy the “ community sing,” a weekly ment in American life. gospel music, the deepest root of jazz and blues and rock and Starting in the late 1960s, very great loss of the Owners, and Corrup­ however, “a generation of tion of such Slaves.” scholarship has emphasized Along the rice coast, early planters slavery’s cruel essence. Slaves remained the strength of black culture” in America, says Joyner. trained slaves in the trades—they were chattel, subject to arbitrary beatings and Scholars such as Joyner have blacksmiths, boatmen, bricklayers, other punishments; their families were often delineated the breadth of carpenters, coopers, and machinists. broken up, children and spouses sold off and African-American folkways, and black influences on modern Soon, though, planters believed that never seen again. “You can’t have an evil music and language and blacks’ skill in the trades had gotten out system that doesn’t have an evil effect,” says religion. of hand. In the 1730s, the South Joyner. But it’s clear that the task system did Yet as the thriving nature of slave culture was emphasized Carolina governor and legislature provide some breathing room for the creole in universities, some scholars petitioned the King of England against culture to survive. began to lose sight of the the practice of training slaves as “Handi­ Soon after the American War of destructive power of slaver y and segregation, says Joyner. craft Tradesmen.” This measure failed Independence, the task system was extended He realized that his work and because skilled slaves were increasingly to sea-island cotton. A number of that of his colleagues was needed to manage the complex machin­ lowcountry planters, broken financially by misunderstood when a new ery of hydraulic pumps and grain mills the war’s interruption of trade, enthusiasti­ generation of students “didn’t know how horrible slavery and that made the rice plantations so cally embraced sea-island cotton, hoping this segregation could be.” Now, he profitable. By 1800, about one of four silky, luxury product would help them out of adds, scholars are providing a lowcountry slaves worked at some bankruptcy. “harsher depiction of slavery,” while also acknowledging the skilled trade, noted Berlin. But to boost the value of their own survival of black culture. The task system did not transform bondsmen and to provide security against

8 • COASTAL HERITAGE constant process of “creolization” throughout the South in the slavery era. New slaves struggled for position against second-and third- and fourth- generation creoles, while also re-infusing plantation life with African traditions. In 1790, one South Carolina Lowcountry slave in ten had been born in Africa; in 1810, one slave in five had been born in Africa. After the Civil War, the plantation’s economic and social system collapsed. Union armies had damaged estates, and many freedmen did not want to work for their former owners. During Reconstruction, African- American men got the right to vote, and many former slaves became small landholders. In Beaufort County, blacks enjoyed a remarkably high degree of land ownership in the late 19th century, but there was also extreme segregation. In 1880, when Beaufort County blacks outnumbered whites 11 to one, the overwhelming majority of freedmen lived in deep backwoods while most whites lived in the city of Beaufort, says Rowland. On the sea islands, the Gullah people owned land where they could subsist in communal communi­ ties. Some freedmen travelled by boat across coastal rivers to labor on the ly tradition on St. Helena Island. ’ cultural influences resonate strongly in African-American mainland, but most stayed on the roll. PHOTO/WADE SPEES. islands, farming small plots, gathering clams and oysters, and netting shrimp, slave revolts, South Carolina rice years, 60 percent were from Angola, crabs, and fish. planters had pushed through a says Rowland. In those days, it was The sea islanders’ independence state ban on the importation of common for Angola to be called may have slowed their assimilation into slaves in 1787. Within a decade, “N’Gulla.” Many historians believe the broader society. Yet living apart many planters changed their that the term “Gullah people” provided advantages, especially in the minds and called for a new originally referred to Angolans. But 1890s when life became considerably importation of slaves to grow and the Lowcountry Gullah were not just harsher for South Carolina blacks. Jim harvest sea-island cotton, an Angolans; they were a mix of Crow laws legally segregated whites and increasingly profitable staple. So different ethnic groups. blacks in public places, wiping out from 1804 to 1808, the South On the sea islands, the huge political and civil rights that African- Carolina slave trade was re­ influx of Africans sustained a caste Americans had held since Reconstruc­ opened, flooding the state with system among slaves, says Rowland. tion. Separate white and black schools new Africans. In just four years, Carolina-born creoles, acculturated were mandated, and African-Americans 40,000 slaves were brought into to slave life, were generally the were disenfranchised. Racists spread South Carolina—one-third of all plantation drivers and skilled terror in some South Carolina counties. the legal, documented slave trade workers. The newly arrived Africans After Cole Blease became South through Charleston since import performed the less desirable tasks Carolina governor in 1911, he openly records were established. Of the and usually held lower status within endorsed lynching, calling it “necessary documented slaves in those four slave communities. There was a and good.” Interacting in this explosive

SPRING 2000 • 9 Sources: climate, blacks and whites kept up a Nevertheless, some black residents of dangerous, intricate dance. “For whites, a Hilton Head sought change. Along with a • Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands misstep could be socially embarrassing; for bridge to the mainland, the resorts brought Gone: The First Two blacks, it could be fatal,” wrote Walter doctors, a hospital, better roads and public Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, Edgar, University of South Carolina services, and improved economic opportu­ Mass.: Harvard University historian, in a 1998 book. nities, wrote political scientist Michael N. Press, 1998. Yet the Gullah people, secure in their Danielson of Princeton University in a • Danielson, Michael N. black majority, were often insulated from 1995 book. One sea islander, who had Profits and Politics in the worst of “The Crow.” Goodwine found himself in a new world after develop­ Paradise. Columbia: University of South Carolina recalls stories of sea-island elders who, ers arrived, welcomed “the day they turned Press, 1995. when venturing to the mainland, were on the electricity.” • Edgar, Walter. South shocked by treatment from whites. In a On the other side of the ledger, rapid Carolina: A History. 1930 book, T. J. Woofter, Jr., a white development has piled tax burdens on local Columbia: University of visitor to St. Helena Island, remarked residents who can’t keep up with the swiftly South Carolina Press, 1998. that sea islanders seemed confident, rising cost of living. Today, Beaufort County • Ellison, Ralph. Going to the lacking the “embarrassment found among enjoys the second highest per-capita Territory. New York: Random Negroes who have had the color line income of any county in the state, and a House, 1986. constantly emphasized.” Sea islanders, he high percentage of college-educated • Ellison, Ralph. Shadow and added, “have not been trained to expect residents. But the county still has a sizable Act. New York: Random frequent rebuffs from white people.” percentage of poor people and residents House, 1964. without high-school diplomas, and many • Joyner, Charles. Shared Traditions: Southern History THE GREAT CHANGE blacks work in low-paying resort service and Folk Culture. Urbana: jobs. University of Illinois Press, In 1957, Charles Fraser, the son of a Along the coast, many black-owned 1999. Georgia timber magnate, began clearing land titles are tangled affairs. Extended • Morgan, Philip D. Slave land to build Sea Pines Plantation, a families often collectively own land as Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century resort on Hilton Head Island. Soon “heirs property.” In many cases, heirs who Chesapeake & Lowcountry. developers saw the sea islands’ economic live far away in New York or New Jersey Chapel Hill: University of potential and bought land there to build want to sell off valuable property they North Carolina Press, 1998. additional resorts. Land values shot up. never see or use. Meanwhile, other family • Pollitzer, William S. The Gullah People and their The new resorts turned sea islanders’ members desperately want to hold onto African Heritage. Athens: lives upside down. Although blacks owned land that’s been held for generations. University of Georgia Press, just 20 percent of the land on Hilton Head “You see heirs fighting each other,” says 1999. before the island was developed, they had Jabari Moketsi, publisher of the bi-weekly • Rowland, Lawrence S. et al. been free to travel anywhere, hunting and Gullah Sentinel newspaper based in Beau­ The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, fishing on property that belonged to fort. “Some people are selling out their Volume 1, 1514-1861. absentee white landlords. But developers family legacy. Gullah is about land,” says Columbia: University of built gates and fences, cutting blacks off Moketsi. “If you can’t hold onto the land, South Carolina Press, 1996. from fishing and hunting grounds and you can’t hold onto the culture.” • Wilson, Henrietta S., ed. sometimes even traditional cemeteries. The Gullah culture, however, is also Coastal Development: Past, The resorts also changed the racial bound up with the language, which has Present, and Future. equation—the black majority was a become more like Standard English over Proceedings of a S.C. Sea majority no more. “On Hilton Head, when the past 40 years. “With integration, Grant Consortium confer­ ence in Charleston, South development came to that island, segrega­ there were dramatic changes in language Carolina, December 3, tion was the law,” said Emory S. Campbell, and a loss of Gullah words,” says author 1982. director of the Penn Center Inc., an and archivist Sherman Pyatt with the • Wood, Peter H. Black educational and cultural center for Avery Research Center for African- Majority. New York: Norton, 1974. African-Americans on St. Helena Island. American History and Culture. “Young Speaking at a 1982 S.C. Sea Grant people who leave and go off to college • Woofter, T.J., Jr. Black Yeomanry: Life on St. Consortium conference, Campbell said: will change their manner of speaking. Helena Island. New York: “Prejudices were prevalent. People became They lose words, the tone and pronuncia­ Octagon Books, 1930. ashamed of their culture; therefore, they tion of Gullah even when they mix with abandoned it. In most cases, they took on blacks from other parts of the country and the culture of the (newcomers).” the state.”

10 • COASTAL HERITAGE ANCIENT TRADITION. Marquetta L. Goodwine, founder of the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, demonstrates rice winnowing at the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site. “All the sea islands have Gullah culture,” she says. “But it’s not like it used to be.” Although St. Helena and Wadmalaw islands have perhaps the strongest Gullah traditions remaining on the South Carolina coast, even there “we’re the ‘Last of the Mohicans.’ ” PHOTO/WADE SPEES.

SPRING 2000 • 11 RESURGENCE? the ancient stories and fables, and singers clap out the ancient rhythms in concerts. On Each year, some links to Gullah history St. Helena Island, the Penn Center, Inc., become increasingly fragile. One elderly organizes heritage festivals that draw visitors woman in Georgia can accurately sing a from around the world, provides youth song that was passed from generation to programs on Gullah culture, and houses local generation and traced by musicologists to history exhibits. an identical one heard today in Sierra A children’s television show, “Gullah Contacts: Leone, yet she doesn’t understand the Gullah Island,” is broadcast in the United Gullah words. States and Canada. Articles in national Charles Joyner, Coastal Robert S. Jones, Jr., director of the newspapers and magazines praise Gullah’s Carolina University, Cole-Heyward House, an historic home in tenacity and historical significance, scholars (843) 347-3161. Bluffton, S.C., once owned by slaveholders, from universities pour into the Lowcountry Marquetta Goodwine, Gullah/ often asks local craftspeople to demonstrate to interview Gullah people, and English Geechee Sea Island Coalition, their skills for visitors. Still, Jones says, it’s translations of the old parables have been (843) 838-5351. difficult to find anyone who knits traditional published. Philip D. Morgan, College of cast nets, an important Gullah craft. “It’s a The Gullah people, though pleased at William & Mary, (757) 221-1125. lost art. It could take $150 to knit a cast net, their sudden popularity, are puzzled, notes but you can go out and a buy a net for $10. Goodwine. For years, she points out, sea Lawrence Rowland, USC- Beaufort, (843) 521-4153. You can’t make a living at 10 cents a day.” islanders “were told, ‘Don’t be who you are.’ Sweetgrass basketmakers struggle to Now we hear the very same people saying, Rosalind Saunders, Brookgreen Gardens, sustain their craft, weaving these baskets ‘Look, Gullah is the greatest thing ever!’” (843) 527-8892. from local materials, which are disappear­ This is an extraordinary turn of fortune William Pollitzer, University of ing. “Sweetgrass used to be plentiful, but for a people who were commonly denigrated North Carolina, development has destroyed it in many by historians only a generation ago. The (919) 942-2568. places and new subdivisions have closed it Gullah language was routinely described as Michael Allen, S.C. African- off,” says Jeannette Lee, coordinator of the “baby-talk” English, and the culture was American Heritage Council, Original Sweetgrass Marketplace Coalition. considered primitive. But a new generation (843) 883-3124. Still, some Gullah traditions are of historians has celebrated the slave culture’s experiencing an Indian summer, however complexity and richness. And “now folks of brief. Sweetgrass baskets do continue to sell the Gullah culture have the opportunity to at stands along Highway 17 and at the describe it themselves,” says Michael Allen, Charleston Market and other tourist spots. former chairperson of the South Carolina Gullah tours are available for tourists in the African-American Heritage Council and a Charleston area and on the sea islands. U.S. Park Service ranger. Some historic plantations, which once Some say that the Gullah language avoided the topic of slavery, now have remains just a lingering remnant, a museum integrated information about Gullah into piece. Within another generation it could their programming. disappear altogether. Historians, however, In schoolrooms, storytellers dramatize point out that all cultures change constantly with new influences and people. So Gullah life, which began as the blending of various Gullah expression English root English translation traditions and ethnic groups, is just taking sho ded sure dead cemetery another vibrant form within the melting pot tebl tappa table-tapper preacher krak teet crack teeth to speak of modern America. Not so fast, argues Goodwine. Gullah English: “To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other can continue to survive as a distinct, unique also: and him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your coat culture, she says—but only if the people can as well.” hold onto their land and teach the younger Gullah: “Ef anybody knock one side ob oona face, mus ton de oda generation about their traditions. “Keeping side an leh um knock de oda side too. Ef somebody take oona coat, the land is a priority,” says Goodwine. “Yet mus gem oona shat too.” we also need to keep spirits intact, to nurture and restore minds, to remind ourselves what Source: The Legacy of Ibo Landing: Gullah Roots of African American Culture, edited by Marquetta L. Goodwine. Clarity Press, 1998. our language is, what our culture is.”

12 • COASTAL HERITAGE Southern Blend

erhaps more than any other American realizing it.” Ellison noted that American English is a region, the South is a mix of African “language that began by merging the sounds of many P and European. Slaves and their descen­ tongues, brought together in the struggle of diverse dants introduced African speech patterns, crafts, regions. And whether it is admitted or not, much of religious practices, and music into white society. the sound of that language is derived from the timbre African musical traditions, of course, were the of the African voice and the listening habits of the primary influence on American gospel, jazz, blues, African ear.” and rock-and-roll. African traditions can be found Over the centuries, black culture and language even in the country music of lily-white mountain have probably affected coastal South Carolina more Appalachia; the banjo was an African instrument than any other segment of the country’s population. that was later modified and taken up by Euro- The overwhelming black majority along most of the Americans. rice coast meant that whites were in constant contact Throughout the region, “white Southerners with African-Americans. had their old cultures Africanized by their black “In places where you had large populations of neighbors and black Southerners had their old black people and smaller populations of white people, cultures Europeanized by their white neighbors,” whites more often adopted black traditions,” says wrote Charles Joyner, Coastal Carolina University historian Lawrence Rowland of the University of historian, in a 1999 book. South Carolina-Beaufort. “Whites and blacks borrowed from one The Gullah people of coastal South Carolina another,” agrees Philip D. Morgan, historian at the were particularly important contributors to language College of William & Mary. “There was a great deal in the region. “Local accents of both whites and of cross-fertilization between blacks and whites.” blacks were affected by Gullah,” says Joyner. “Even The novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison, who today, the influence of Gullah is pretty strong” in died a few years ago, often wrote about the inextri­ Charleston and along the coast. Within the white cable blend of black and white that is America. In community, he notes, “the Gullah traditions have the 1950s, he argued that “most American whites survived strongly among the elite who had been are culturally part Negro American without even plantation-raised.”

Guide helps visitors find history

The S. C. Sea Grant This guide helps visitors explore a Extension Program worked route of special and diverse places, with the S.C. Heritage highlighting points of interest in Corridor and the African- African-American heritage and American Heritage Council black-owned businesses. Request your to produce a guide, “Touring copy by calling (803) 734-2303 or the S.C. African-American view it on the Web at

Related Websites Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition: http://users.aol.com/queenmut/GullGeeCo.html Penn Center, Inc.: http://www.angelfire.com/sc/jhstevens/penncenter.html

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